‘Waiting for Godot’ Theater Review: Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter’s Beckett Spin Nails the Absurdist Tragicomedy but Underserves the Angst

While the Samuel Beckett estate is notoriously rigid about changes to the Irish playwright’s texts, they seem cool with a quick air-guitar riff. That cheeky insertion, which comes right after Keanu Reeves’ Estragon leans against Alex Winter’s Vladimir and says, “Back to back like in the good old days,” gets the biggest laugh of Jamie Lloyd’s mixed-bag Waiting for Godot revival. As soon as the production was announced, New York theater buffs were calling it Bill & Ted’s Existential Adventure, referring to the stars’ history in the sci-fi comedy trilogy named for their time-traveling metalheads.

It turns out, paradoxically, that rather than just a single winking aside, the play could have used more of those sweet-natured dimwits. Playing out Beckett’s grim scenario of two poor souls stuck in post-apocalyptic limbo as Bill and Ted at least would have represented a bold choice — something Lloyd’s staging makes only in the stylized design department.

Soutra Gilmour’s imaginative set dispenses with the usual lonely country road and withered tree, instead framing the (in)action in a giant wooden funnel, the blackness at its far-end aperture suggesting unsettling proximity to the void. It’s a striking visual, enhanced by Jon Clark’s expertly calibrated lighting and the exacting sound design of Ben and Max Ringham. But as the old theatrical adage states: “Nobody goes home humming the scenery.”

The awkward but lovely moments in which Reeves and Winter’s decades-long friendship is evoked — an urgent embrace, a coat draped over a sleeping body, a gentle caress, clasped hands — are among the most touching representations here of two men whose only refuge in a purgatory of encroaching terror is each other.

In-demand Brit director Lloyd is a specialist at stripping down plays and musicals to scratch out raw feeling and electrifying modernity, usually with major-name stars. His successes on Broadway have included Tom Hiddleston in Betrayal, Jessica Chastain in A Doll’s House and Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Blvd., while his buzzed-about London revival of Evita, with Rachel Zegler, seems likely to be New York-bound before long.

But the thing is, Waiting for Godot is already about as stripped-down as mainstream theater gets. There’s not much to be gained by swapping out props like a carrot or a picnic basket or a pipe for mime or relocating to our imaginations the tree that was the sole element Beckett specified in his austere visual concept. The play, which has been baffling and provoking audiences for almost 75 years, is already an exercise in theatrical deconstruction.

Lloyd’s production isn’t an embarrassing misfire but it’s underwhelming. This is a work in which the slapstick clowning and the tricky verbal non sequiturs should be merely the surface for roiling undercurrents of anguish, futility, despair and fear.

Reeves and to a lesser degree Winter mostly favor the frustrating ennui. Sure, there’s melancholy and humiliating loss of dignity beneath their circuitous conversation, which appears to have been going on since as far back as their memories extend, or farther. But Beckett’s masterwork should make us laugh while mercilessly prodding our own sense of hopelessness. That makes it both timely and timeless.

As Pozzo (Brandon J. Dirden), the self-important blowhard who stumbles upon the protagonists with his mistreated servant in tow, the ironically named Lucky (Michael Patrick Thornton), declaims: “Let us not speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all.”

The thing is though, multiple generations these days do wake up each morning decidedly unhappier than their predecessors. Or at least angrier, more isolated and reconciled to catastrophe. Which should make Waiting for Godot knock the wind out of us like a punch in the guts.

Not so much here, even if there’s pleasure in watching Reeves and Winter as a dystopian, bowler-hatted Laurel and Hardy. They make Gogo and Didi, as the characters fondly address each other, as tetchy as they are affectionate, as mutually exasperated as they are confused, scared and clingy.

Winter has the strongest moments as the more grounded Didi, deep in contemplation throughout the eternal anticipation of Godot’s arrival but more resigned each day to the reality that salvation in the guise of that mysterious entity or any other will not be coming.

The revival’s most affecting note is when a young boy (Zaynn Arora at the performance reviewed), who brings another deferred promise from “Mr. Godot,” asks if Vladimir has any message for him. “Tell him … tell him you saw me and that … that you saw me,” stammers Didi, as if proof of his ongoing existence depends on the word of a child. And yet, despite everything, he holds onto his sense of purpose.

That’s something Reeves’ Gogo, whose memory is completely shot, has surrendered. The actor gets mileage out of stiff-limbed physical comedy, but his signature spaced-out monotone — so perfect in the John Wick movies, as well as earlier favorites like Speed, Point Break, The Matrix and My Own Private Idaho — makes Gogo the less soulful of the two. Even when he’s suggesting the expedient of suicide by hanging or making grim pronouncements like: “It would be better if we parted. The best thing would be to kill me,” his Gogo is one-dimensional. (As a longtime fan, it kills me to say that.)

Perhaps many Broadway theatergoers paying up to $500 a ticket to see beloved screen stars up close in a uniquely intimate play may come away feeling satisfied. Reeves and Winter certainly throw themselves into crowd-pleasing moments like a frenetic hat-swapping routine.

But New Yorkers who have seen more seasoned stage actors in the roles in more penetrating productions — Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin in 2009; Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in 2013 — might be forgiven for feeling that Lloyd has given insufficient thought to any concept beyond the novelty casting of an iconic screen comedy duo.

Venue: Hudson Theatre, New York
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Brandon J. Dirden, Michael Patrick Thornton, Zaynn Arora, Eric Williams
Director: Jamie Lloyd
Playwright: Samuel Beckett
Set and costume designer: Soutra Gilmour
Lighting designer: Jon Clark
Sound designers: Ben & Max Ringham
Presented by the Jamie Lloyd Company, ATG Productions, Bad Robot Live, Gavin Kalin Productions